The internet of vehicles is primarily applied for the purpose of reducing the number of traffic accidents occurring. In the internet of vehicles system, an On-Board Unit (OBU) on a vehicle monitors the position and traveling information of the vehicle, and broadcasts the information to the surrounding vehicles, and also the OBU on the vehicle further receives the information sent by the OBUs on the other vehicles; and the OBU on the vehicle analyzes the traveling information of the current vehicle and the other vehicles, and notifies a driver of a possible accident threat in a timely manner.
For the sake of security, in the internet of vehicles system, a certificate for the vehicle to issue a message broadcasted by the vehicle is referred to as a message certificate. Respective privileges possessed by the vehicle are typically stored in the message certificate, e.g., an internet of vehicles specific certificate defined in the IEEE 1609.2. The message certificate is typically sent to the receiver together with the issued message so that the message receiver can authenticate the received message. The message certificate includes a public key for verifying a signature of the message, and a description of the privileges of the sender. In the internet of vehicles system, each of the vehicles possesses a normal message certificate describing the lowest pass privilege. In addition to the normal message certificate, a special vehicle possessing a higher pass privilege possesses a special message certificate describing its higher pass privilege. In this case, the privileges possessed by the special vehicle are the sum of the privileges described by all its message certificates. The respective message certificates applied in the internet of vehicles system are issued by a Certificate Authority (CA) in some flow which particularly includes requesting, reviewing, issuing, distributing, and other processes.
However in some urgent cases, for example, if there is a serious patient to be delivered to a hospital, there is some special material to be transported, etc., then a civilian vehicle may also need a priority pass privilege. A message certificate required for the vehicle needing the high priority pass privilege can not be issued to the vehicle in the existing message certificate issuing flow in the urgent case because it may take such a long period of time for requesting for the certificate in which the urgent event can not be handled in a timely manner; and furthermore if required data communication means is unavailable (for example, data can not be transmitted between the OBU and the CA) while the event is occurring, then the message certificate can not be issued in the prior art.
At present, the internet of vehicles is being investigated and the related standards thereof are being developed, so numerous issues thereof have been ignored. None of the related technological standards has been concerned so far with a technical solution to issue a message certificate required for a vehicle needing a high priority pass privilege in an urgent case, and no related research effort has been identified to address this issue.